{"id":29807,"date":"2019-06-04T08:24:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T12:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=29807"},"modified":"2019-06-04T08:24:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T12:24:39","slug":"bookexpo-sidelined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=29807","title":{"rendered":"BookExpo, Sidelined?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I’ve only missed two or three BookExpos \u2014 that former lion of trade shows for the book industry \u2014 in 23 years. Held every spring,\u00a0BookExpo was the<\/em>\u00a0arena for serious bookseller education, for us to see all the upcoming fall books, socialize with colleagues from around the country, meet with publishers and publicists, collect some prized autographs from authors\u00a0and book-writing celebrities, and attend dinners and parties held by publishing houses celebrating their star book lineup for the fourth quarter. We can still do\u00a0much of that BookExpo, but it’s become a shadow of its former self\u00a0for many booksellers.
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\nMostly,\u00a0that’s because\u00a0we no longer need BookExpo for meetings with publishers and publicists, or those vital best-practice workshops on finance, marketing, events, etc. Several years ago, the American Booksellers Association created a\u00a0January education conference\u00a0called Winter Institute, which essentially pares out everything about BookExpo that doesn’t apply to booksellers and packs in everything that does. It’s a much more focused and relevant experience for us \u2014 after all, BookExpo isn’t solely a booksellers’ conference; it also\u00a0strives to serve\u00a0publishers’ needs,\u00a0providing marketplace\u00a0analysis and\u00a0foreign rights opportunities among other things. The ABA also created a youth literature-focused booksellers education conference held every spring. So booksellers, around 700 of whom attend Winter Institute and 300+ of whom attend Children’s Institute, have found themselves wondering if BookExpo is worth the expense.
\nWandering around the show floor these days is vastly different from the flush 1990s and early 2000s. The economy and the predations of Amazon have both wreaked some havoc on the industry, expenses are sky-high at the Javits Center in New York where the show takes place, and budgets are slim. The hall feels about 1\/3 as full of publishers and books as it once was. So how can BookExpo continue to attract booksellers?
\nOne change it made this year\u00a0was to\u00a0add a section to the show floor called UnBound, an area devoted to the non-book merchandise booksellers bring in to our stores.\u00a0This turned out to be a useful and fun addition to the show for us. For bookstores who\u00a0don’t attend separate gift or toy fairs,\u00a0the sideline addition to BookExpo was especially welcome.
\nIn addition to perennial bookseller-favorite\u00a0sidelines companies like Out of Print<\/a>, there were companies new to me, with products I hadn’t yet seen. From Eco-Kids<\/a>, we ordered eco-friendly\u00a0art supplies\u00a0for kids and a display of “therapy dough”\u2014scented with lavender, mint, or sweet orange\u2014for adults. (Side note: the order went in on\u00a0Wednesday or Thursday and arrived at the store on Friday. That was FAST! Also, we put out the therapy dough display, which has demo samples, on Saturday, and sold two out of the gate.)
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\nWe also decided to bring in Taza Chocolate<\/a>, an item that is beautifully packaged. We had tried a sample last year, but its stone-ground slight grittiness was a love-or-leave-cold texture among our staff, so I nixed it then. Sampling it again, I still liked it, as did my two companions, so I’m bringing it in, along with their new, smoother-textured chocolate-covered cashews, almonds, and hazelnuts, which I suspect my staff will be hoarding for our snack box.
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\nWe also\u00a0stocked up on\u00a0Dissent Pins<\/a> (aka Outfitters\u00a0to the Resistance), which has everything from Ruth Bader Ginsberg collar earrings to Science Is Real, Women in Science, and Reproductive Justice pins. We’ve been meaning to order from them for a while, so this was a great opportunity.
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\nWe paid visits to our friends and longtime sidelines vendors at Semaki & Bird<\/a>, Orange Art<\/a>, and Blackwing<\/a>, and of course Merrymakers<\/a>\u00a0(still in the book section, not in the separate sidelines wing), along with many others. And we discovered a lovely fair-trade company, Silk Road Bazaar<\/a>, whose artisans make\u00a0beautiful, adorable\u00a0felt slippers for children and\u00a0terrific felt ornaments of heroes and artists. (Since we don’t carry clothing for kids, we mentioned to the vendor our neighboring toy store in town and encouraged\u00a0her to get in touch with them.)
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\nIs BookExpo still relevant for booksellers? For me, the answer is still a qualified yes. (It’s easy for me to make the trek to NYC from Vermont, which can’t be said for many booksellers around the country.) The big author breakfasts,\u00a0high-level\u00a0speakers\u2014this year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor!\u2014and interesting panel discussions still make BookExpo a unique destination for booksellers. I love the author signings in the ABA Lounge, and running into West Coast author pals I rarely get to see, and I like an extra opportunity in the year to meet with publishers. And the PW Show Daily magazines, which I fully perused perhaps for the first time this year, are extremely useful. I actually brought two of them home as reminders for some of the books and authors I want to highlight this fall.
\nI think BookExpo’s decision to expand sidelines\u00a0(or re-expand them, since back in the heyday, there was an entire hall of sidelines) was a smart one, though I have no data on whether it was worth it for those companies.\u00a0Now that everyone’s back home from the show, or\u00a0chose not to attend, it will be interesting to hear what\u00a0the verdict is for future BookExpos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How did the new non-book section fare at the year’s big book show?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}